Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools bucked state law. House leader demands to know why.
CORRECTION: The Chapel Hill-Carrboro School Board amended the district’s policy in January 2024 to include the state’s prohibition on K-4 classroom instruction about gender identity, sexuality or sexual activity. Previous stories said the board rejected the K-4 instruction ban.
State lawmakers have asked Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools officials to testify in December about a 2024 decision to not fully comply with the state’s Parents’ Bill of Rights.
The N.C. House Select Committee on Oversight and Reform sent letters Wednesday asking CHCCS school board Chair George Griffin and Superintendent Rodney Trice to appear at a Dec. 3 meeting to testify about the decision.
“This body is deeply troubled to learn that Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools (CHCCS) has intentionally breached the North Carolina Constitution and state laws to indoctrinate children as young as six years old with inappropriate materials involving sex and gender,” said the letters, which House Majority Leader Brenden Jones’ office provided to The News & Observer.
The district has not formally responded to the request yet, but is “in compliance with state law,” CHCCS spokesman Andy Jenks said in an email Friday.
The call to testify before legislators follows an online, social-media post that included a video of Griffin responding to a question about the board’s decision during a September candidates forum in Chapel Hill.
The post accused Griffin of “bragging” about the district’s refusal to comply with the law, which was passed in 2023. Jones, a Republican from Tabor City and the committee’s chair, shared the post online this week.
The letters noted that further investigation has also shown “CHCCS is championing divisive ideas about race under the pretense of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion.’”
“This divisive indoctrination is not only morally wrong, but may violate federal civil rights laws,” the letters said.
“If Chapel Hill-Carrboro thought they could hide indoctrination behind closed doors and call it policy, they misjudged this legislature. Parents are not props. The law isn’t optional. And on December 3rd, they’ll explain themselves to the people’s House,” Jones said in a statement released by his office Friday.
The letters give the district until Nov. 14 to provide policies and other documents, training materials, internal and external communications, and a “‘legal theory’ about why the N.C. Constitution and SB 49 do not apply to CHCCS.”
What did CHCCS school board approve?
The school board implemented most of the new law in January 2024, but balked at requirements that schools notify parents if their students use a different name or pronoun at school.
Instead, district administrators developed written guidance for how educators should handle name and pronoun change requests in a way that protects students and staff.
District policy requires school personnel to encourage students to talk to their parents about issues that come up, and also allows school personnel to help students have that conversation.
School board members acknowledged at the time of the vote that not implementing some of the law’s requirements could cause legal problems, but voted for the policy to protect students and staff from a law that community members said discriminates against LGBTQ+ students and could cause them more harm.
Someone needs to “stand up for what’s right,” Griffin said at the meeting.
“My sense is that we do need to stand up and show people that somebody has the courage to say this is just morally wrong, and we’re not going to do it this way,” he said.
Griffin spoke briefly with The N&O at a Wednesday event featuring State Superintendent Mo Green in Chapel Hill, saying he had not heard from the state but hoped the General Assembly could focus on more serious issues, such as teacher pay.
Griffin did not immediately respond to a phone call Friday seeking additional comment, but the district re-issued a statement shared earlier this week that said Griffin “was referring to local deliberations that occurred at the time of the law’s initial implementation” when he spoke at the campaign forum in September.
“At the time (of the vote), we took steps to go beyond the minimum requirements of the statute, and instead of just adopting the blanket policy language, we developed detailed, nuanced guidance for school staff in order to foster collaboration with families and protect the social-emotional wellbeing of our students,” district spokesman Jenks said in the statement.
This story was originally published October 31, 2025 at 11:48 AM.
